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by Acnara



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, So its not crack its just unsettling lmao, and i just had to go and make it creepy, this happened because i once had a crack conversation about harry adopting delphi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 17:46:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acnara/pseuds/Acnara
Summary: “Are you lonely?”Always the same conversation.“Maybe. Sometimes.”“Sometimes I am, too. I think.”---Six years after the battle of Hogwarts and the death of the Dark Lord, Harry Potter dreams of a little girl in a forest. Because it was never really over.





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonarous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonarous/gifts).



> Happy Birthday beauty queen!! For this special occasion I decided not to punish you and asked Eveiss to beta this (bless you Eveiss I swear), but it´s still my average pseudo creepy badfic so... hopefully you don´t dislike it way too much!
> 
> Quick note, i would recommend everyone to listen to Where the Lonely Ones Roam by Digital Daggers before/while/after reading. It just sets the mood and maybe helps understand Delphi´s arc/character better.

_ Her hair was dark, dark charcoal and she looked so small Harry was sure she would have fit in the cupboard under the stairs. _

  
  


She looks so small compared to the huge coffin In which lay the red eyes that used to haunt him under those stairs, too.

 

\---

 

The forest is dark, the full moon half-hidden by the branches illuminating footsteps Harry leaves on the snow. 

He runs.

Dreams had always been a big part of his life. When he was small, red eyes would stare at him in the dark and whisper to him things he never remembered when Aunt Petunia woke him up demanding breakfast. Later, -after smoke and Cedric and the graveyard-  death and snake features had joined the pair of eyes. But since the war,  _ since the end of it all,  _ Harry Potter’s nightmares are just cold, vague, and  _ run. _

He is running, and he knows he is dreaming. The ache in his chest tells him so.  He had lost something.  _ He needs to find it, he needs to find it before- _

Before what? Before nothing, that's what. He should wake up. What is the point of being aware of dreaming if he can’t wake up? But his legs keep moving, his heartbeat keeps racing, and Harry keeps  _ looking. _

When this particular nightmare starts to happen, a couple of days after the Battle of Hogwarts, he is sure he is looking for Ron and Hermione.

When he starts to feel like that is not the case, he concludes his runs through the forest are for Ginny.

After that, he stops trying to find them a meaning at all.

 

_ The battle was over, and he was safe, _

_ Mrs Weasley kept telling him so. _

_ He had been lying in bed for an hour now, _

_ Ron and Hermione at each side, _

_ and every time he closed his eyes he saw Him, _

_ Dying _

_ Alive _

_ Dying  _

_ Was it really over? _

_ It hadn't been over the last time. _

_ So many people. So much death. It had to be over. He was too tired for it to not be over. _

_ But his parents had died and it hadn't been over the last time, right? _

 

\---

 

The first time Harry sees her, he thinks she is a ghost. Like Remus. Like Sirius.

Like everyone he had brought back with that dreaded stone in the forest was.

He is running, unsurprisingly, when he sees a girl. 

It is cold, snow falling from the sky, and she is barefoot.

Later, when he wakes up, he isn’t sure how he has caught that small detail about her. He ran past the little girl at full speed. 

He sees her again a couple of months later. It has been years after the battle. Years of Harry Potter running alone in the darkness of the forest, the moon laughing at him and a pressure on his chest threatening to crush his lungs and steal him from the world.

Six years, to be exact. Harry has run for six years until he finds a little girl in the woods.

She doesn't make him stop running.

 

_ Sometimes, at night,  _

_ Staring deep into the ceiling with Ginny breathing by his side he wondered if he was a ghost, too. _

_ He wondered if what came out of that forest was like Remus. Like Sirius.  _

_ Like mum. Like dad. _

 

_ Like Him, now. _

  
  


\---

 

She doesn’t talk. He is very sure of that. The little girl has showed up in his dreams for over a year now, and she does not talk.

Until she does.

And for the first time in almost seven years, Harry stops running.

“What?” his breath comes quick and husky, his knees almost giving up and throwing him to the snow covered ground. He is trembling so hard the world becomes a blur for a moment.

“Aren't you tired?” she repeats. And Merlin, she sounds so young. Her brown eyes stare at him, wild mess of dark curls framing her little face, and he only gapes at her.

“What?” he says again, softer.

“You are always running. Aren't you tired?”

He wants to talk to her. He wants to ask things. The heaviness on his chest has other plans.

“I'm looking for something.” he manages to say. He feels his legs tense. His shoulders tense, too. For a second he stops trembling, and he is completely still.

“Oh, you too? Are you lonely, then?”

He starts running again.

 

_ Work was distracting, and he ascended through the auror ranks so quickly he knew it couldn't be just his skills getting recognized. _

_ His friends were distracting, and Hermione announcing his pregnancy made the whole Wizarding World rejoice. It all was very distracting.  _

_ Ginny was distracting, and when her lips found his under the covers on the bed they now shared, in the house now owned, he let her make him forget about running around the forest and little girls and that ache in his chest that had been threatening to drown him. _

 

_ \--- _

 

Harry almost wishes the little girl didn't talk at all. They never have much time -Harry is always anxious to  _ run  _ to  _ find- _ and the little girl never answers his questions.

_ “  _ Who are you?” 

“Are you lonely?”

Always the same conversation. 

“Maybe. Sometimes.”

“Sometimes I am, too. I think.”

 

**_Wizarding Britain fears again: new items have been removed from the Ministry of Magic._ **

**_Auror Jake lverns confirms that a series of artifacts related to You-Know-Who and the second Wizarding War have been removed from the Department of Mysteries. We ask the Head of the department if-_ **

 

_ Harry threw the damned newspaper to the nearest wall, his heart racing and his magic swinging around like a small hurricane. _

_ It had happened again. Again. _

_ Ginny arrived home and she was pale, but not trembling. Not shaking.  _

_ Not like Harry. _

_ “They are fanatics, Harry. Something similar happened a while ago and nothing terrible has happened, right? This will be over soon.”   _

_ It felt like it was never fucking over.  _

 

_ \--- _

 

_ “  _ Does it feel better? Running?” the girl is swinging her shoeless feet from the lowest branch of a beautiful and huge yew tree, and Harry stops running when he sees her.

“ It's better than not running. It's better than staying still.”

Better than not looking. Than not trying. _ Finditfinditfindit. _

She blows a dark curl from her face and something in Harry knows he has seen it somewhere before. She looks at him from her high branch like a little queen, the snowflakes on her hair building her an ice cold crown. 

“And what are you looking for? Why do you keep dreaming this?”

“I don't know.” 

And it's not a lie. That's the problem.  _ It's just not a lie. _

 

_ Ron and him caught bad guys. That was their job. None of them were Him, of course, but they were something. The adrenaline in his veins when he chased them helped him make the weight on his chest less obvious. It helped him escape from the raw silence that kept him awake at night.  _

_ They fired spells at him and he never felt more alive than when his body took control and snapped everything else away. There was that something in him, always restless, that had grown over the last months. Maybe the last years. _

_ Sometimes he felt like water, slipping through everyone's fingers.  _

 

_ \--- _

 

His runs never stop, but he doesn't feel the urge to leave and keep searching every five words anymore, either. Something about the girl makes his body calm. Makes his ache rest. 

She is always wearing a white dress. Almost looks like a very old fashioned pajama.

“How old are you?” 

She looks at him through her eyelashes. 

“Is there something missing? Is that what you are looking for?”

Her skin is pale and she looks like a doll, all alone in a winter night, shredding Harry of himself with every simple word.

“I don't know.” he shudders. “I don't know where it is. I can't find it.” he hates how his voice breaks at the end of the sentence.

She tilts her head to the side and a waterfall of curls drips darkness over her dress.

“Did you lose it, then?

Harry can feel heartbeat inside his bones

“I think it was stolen from me.” 

 

_ Things were not always perfect, but sometimes they seemed good enough to pass as perfect, and Harry had learned to cherish those moments. Ron was choosing furniture for the baby's room, going on about colors and Luna wanting to paint some designs on the ceiling. Harry was holding little Teddy on his hip (for once Andromeda had let him take his little godson outside by himself) and life felt pretty beautiful.  _

_ As time went by, these moments had started to evade Harry. He tightened his hold around Teddy and laughed at Ron's joke and tried to make it all fill that hole underneath his ribs. _

 

_ \--- _

 

Hidden under the bed “Auror in training number two”, as Ron calls him, finds a little girl.

Harry can hear him shout over the noise of the battle about a little girl, and the witch he is fighting howls.

They had found the hidden spot of the dark wizards a couple of months ago but hadn't been able to attack until that very night. Rumor had it that they were a bunch of Voldemort fanatics, and that had been enough for Harry to volunteer as leader of the first squad. The Ministry was hoping they could blame them for the robbery in the Department of Mysteries, but Harry’s team finds nothing once the fight is over. Well, not nothing.

They find a little girl.

Auror in training number two, who is actually called Mike, carries her out of the partially destroyed house and her hair is so dark it looks like midnight is spilling all over her shoulders.

Harry's fingers twitch.

 

“ _ You can't be serious. Have you gone crazy, Harry?” _

 

_ \--- _

 

It is probably not wise. He wants to do it anyway.

Ginny is standing right beside him, and while her posture is tense she agreed to this. They both know a kid is a kid, no matter how darkness has touched them.  They both know kids should not be left alone with that darkness, either.

Harry's eyes search for the little girl on Saint Mungo’s bed the second the nurse opens the door, a concerned line on her forehead.

“She is not much of a talker.” The woman offers them an apologetic smile, but Harry’s eyes are glued to the girl's. “One of the Aurors came around this morning and told us that all the information they could take out of those Death Eaters that were captured was her name. That and some dumb threats to their families. These people, dear Merlin…”

Harry approaches her slowly but doesn't dare to touch her. They are assessing each other. Does she recognize him? He can barely believe she is really there. She exists, as in a walking and breathing existence, and not just in Harry's dreams.

“Hi, I'm Harry. Harry Potter. And this is Ginny.”

The girl takes a quick look at Ginny before her eyes snap back at Harry. She takes one of her hands from under the covers -and Merlin, it is just as pale as he remembers it- and lays it palm up over the bed. Harry looks at it as something on his chest  _ longs. _

“Hi.” Ginny’s hand on his shoulder makes him let out the breath he hadn't noticed he had been holding. The red hair tickles his neck as she lowers herself beside him and takes the little girl's hand. “I've heard a lot about you. You are very brave, you know?”

The girl glances at her again, blink and you'll missed it, and then her attention is on Harry again.

“Hi.” she mutters, so low it could have been a whisper.

The nurse is just  _ delighted. _

“See? I told you some very nice people were visiting today, Delphi.”

 

_ His superior screamed at him when Harry reported that nothing had been found in the house where they had arrested the Death Eaters. _

_ “Are you sure? Are you completely sure, Potter? _

_ Last time anything had broken into the Ministry and stolen something they had made the exact same fuss. Two years now, and still no progress. _

_ Harry left his office in a rush. What the hell had they wanted him to find?  _

  
  


_ \--- _

 

Delphi arrives at Harry and Ginny’s home with a small bag under her arm and that white pajamas. Her eyes are big and dark, and she stares at the house unblinking.

Harry leads her to the guest room, smiling at her warmly as he invites her in.

“Make yourself comfortable, okay? This is home now.”

She stares. She always stares. Ginny is looking at them from the frame of the door, a small smile on her lips too.

“We can change the color if you don't like this peach,” she laughs, sending Delphi a knowing look. “Harry is nice but he still has a  _ boy _ eye for colors, don't you think?”

Delphi sends her a long look, and says nothing. Ginny’s smile falls for a second, but recovers quickly.

“I'm going to make some chocolate. Do you like chocolate, Delphi?”

Delphi stares.

When Ginny leaves, the little girl turns her dark eyes to him, holding the bunch of clothes against her chest, her pale skin almost translucent.

“Do you like it?” he asks her. She shrugs her shoulders and with a fluid movement slips her tiny hand in Harry's.

 

_ Harry hadn’t felt this free running in the forest in years.  _

_ For a long time, it had reminded him too much of his nightmares but now? Now he just felt light. _

_ His feet almost didn't touch the ground. His heart raced. The trees around him didn't feel oppressive or suffocating and he smiled when he thought of how life felt a little bit more right. _

 

_ One step. Another step.  _

_ Nearer. Nearer. _

_ I'llfindit _

 

_ Maybe he should take Delphi to run with him. She is awfully quiet when around people, maybe the woods would help. _

  
  


_ \--- _

 

Ginny is braiding Delphi’s hair and Harry is just happy they are having a little moment. Delphi didn't talk that much and he knows Ginny has been trying hard to make her open up to her a bit. She never complains, but he knows she wants Delphi to act around her as she does around him. 

Harry has never told her about the dreams. He hasn’t talked about them with Delphi, either. 

He just wants to give the child a chance. He doesn't care her parents were obviously Death Eaters. Ginny doesn’t, either. They are going to give this girl a family, and there is no need to bring their dreams up. Even if he still has them, from time to time.

“Look at how pretty you look.” Ginny smooths down the wrinkles on Delphi’s dress. They are about to go see the Grangers for lunch and Ginny had insisted on making all three of them dress up a bit.  _ Only polite _ , she said.

Delphi locks eyes with him through the mirror and when he smiles she does, too.

 

_ “I'm just saying maybe she needs to… talk to someone.” _

_ “What does that even mean, Hermione?” _

_ “She… says things, Harry. When you are not there.” _

_ “Well good! I thought the problem was that she would not talk to anyone but me! What is the problem now?” _

_ “Look, Harry-” _

_ “Stop. You don't like her because she doesn't speak. When she speaks, you don't like what she says. Just- stop. Please. She is just a girl.” _

_ She makes me feel blissfully near to whole, he didn't say. _

 

_ \--- _

 

Ron jokes about Delphi going shoeless often, and Harry shrugs. It's not like shoes are required in someone's house.

When Ginny comes back from the garden with Hermione, Ron asks her her opinion and her lips tense for a second before smiling.

“She says it's more comfortable.”

“Well, won't be denying that.” Ron barks out a laugh and Harry sips his butterbeer. The ache is his chest is making itself more noticeable and Harry finds himself thinking of Delphi. He always feels better when he is with her. 

 

_ Like he had found the closest thing to what he is looking for. But yet, the pain remains.  _

_ The closest thing was not enough. _

_ He ran in his sleep, night after night. _

 

_ \--- _

 

The Ministry wants him to do a late shift. There has been some movement in a known drug dealing zone his team had cleared out a month ago.

He is passing by the kitchen when he hears Delphi’s voice.

“Gods only love themselves, you know?”

Harry hears that the sounds of Ginny making dinner stop abruptly before they come back a heartbeat later.

“Well, I have read enough Greek mythology to know that much.” She is laughing. Harry is not sure why is he listening from outside of the door.

“That's why he didn't love you.”

The sound stills again. For a second, Harry doesn’t dare to breath.

“But that's okay. That's why he will love  _ us.” _

 

_ The Ministry wanted them to meet with Rodolphus Lestrange.  _

_ Ginny made him go, but they agreed on leaving Delphi home. _

_ Hermione was there, her undersecretary insignia shining proudly on her chest as Lestrange taunted her about meeting Bellatrix’s daughter. _

_ “Your child is not as sick as you.” She spat, daggers in her eyes as he laughed at her. Harry was disgusted. _

_ “My child? Oh mudblood, that girl is not mine at all. You must know.” _

_ They left Azkaban without any new information. Hermione white as paper and Ginny’s nails digging into Harry's arm like claws. _

 

_ \---  _

 

_ “ _ Are you lonely?”

Ginny is out training with her quidditch team for the whole week and Harry is washing the dishes, passing them to Delphi’s small figure so she can dry them. The light outside their window is fading slowly.

“I have you with me, don't I?” He smiles and relishes in the tiny quirk of her lips. So close to a smile…

“Don't you ever feel empty?” she asks again.

Harry’s heart misses a beat.

“Do you?”

“Sometimes,” her hair is a half up do and she looks so delicate Harry is afraid to breath in her direction. He can't afford to break her.

_ Not again, not again, Ineedtofind- _

_ “ _ But not that much anymore.” she looks into his eyes and Harry is sure she is talking directly to his soul “Not when you are with me. It's better, now.”

Something claws at Harry's chest.

“Yeah. I think I get it.”

Delphi sneaks into his bed that night and Harry lets her small figure press against his chest and falls asleep to the sound of her breath. Pressing her close to him, he feels the terrible ache is insides dilute. A bearable hurting, now. 

He wonders if having kids does this, or if it's just a Delphi thing.

  
  


_ Ron tried to talk to him. Apparently everyone knew about Delphi’s mother now. _

_ “It's not her fault”  _

_ “I know mate. I'm just saying, maybe you should find the girl someone she can talk to. She grew up there.” _

_ “She can talk to me. Or Ginny.” _

  
  


\---

 

Harry is reading Delphi a bedtime story when Ginny steps into the room. She looks tired, Harry notices. She has been looking tired for some time now, but she looked better after the week she spent with her team.

Now the bags under her eyes are back, and Harry feels guilty for not knowing how to remove them from his fiancé’s beautiful face.

Ginny sits on the other side of Delphi’s bed and lets her head rest of Harry's shoulder. She quietly asks what they are reading and smiles a little when Harry shows her the muggle fairy-tale book.

“More princesses with unpronounceable names?” she teases him and he breathes a laugh when she presses her lips to his in a chaste kiss.

“Never really had the chance to read them before,” he replies “I'm making up for the lost time.”

It's a nice moment. Nicer than any other the two of them have shared in a long time. For a second, Harry thinks that maybe they can go back to who they were before things turned wrong.

He ignores the little ache in his chest when he thinks of ever going back to feeling like he did  _ before _ .

_ Empty, emptier- _

“Why is she still here?”

Delphi’s voice cuts the moment like glass and Ginny’s features become hard and angry. She glares at the little girl and Harry chokes at nothing.

“When is she gonna leave?” dark eyes are staring at him, and Harry can't believe Delphi is really- “She shouldn't be here. It should be just us. She is not like us _. Make her leave, dad.”  _

Harry's heartbeat is the only thing he can hear for a second. 

Dad.  _ He was a dad. _

He half feels Ginny leave the room in a hurry.

 

_ “I'm done with it, Harry! I want her out. I've tried, I've tried so hard but I can't. She- knows things. Says things. I can't do this anymore!” _

_ “Ginny stop screaming, you are gonna scare Delphi-” _

_ “Well good! Maybe then I don't have to be the only one afraid in my own home!” _

_ “She is also trying, I will talk to her-” Harry tried to touch her, but she recoiled like he was poisonous. _

_ “I don't want you to talk to her. You think she is always the way she acts around you, but she is not. You don't know the things she- ” _

_ “She is a child!” _

_ “You are so blind.” Her face was beautiful even with tears streaming down her cheeks. “That's not just Bellatrix’s genes. Bellatrix didn't speak parseltongue.” _

_ It's not like he could argue that. Ginny looked at him waiting for a reaction. Her eyes were shiny and Harry was sure that if she cried he would do so too. _

_ “I can't if it's- I can put up with Bellatrix’s daughter.  Merlin, I can even try and love Bellatrix´s daughter. I have done so. But if she's-” _

_ Harry didn’t say anything. Refused to say anything. To even think about it. _

_ Ginny packed her quidditch uniform and left the house that night. _

 

_ \--- _

 

“You shouldn't have done that.”

“Why did you let her kiss you?” 

The moon is high in the sky and in his dreams Delphi’s cheeks are charmingly red.

“I love her.”

Delphi’s lips are tight.

“She is not our family.”

Harry wants to disagree but the ring Ginny had left on the kitchen table kind of proved Delphi’s point.

 

_ Ron was the first to get to him after that. He took him out with Dean and Seamus and he drank until the pain of Ginny leaving mixed with the pain he usually felt. _

_ Maybe Delphi could cure that one too. _

 

_ \--- _

 

Things are strange without Ginny around. They are not bad at all. And that is strange.

Harry knows he loves Ginny. Or used to. Before.

_ Before. _ The world has so much more meaning now. 

The little girl holding his hand looks so small compared to Azkaban’s walls, but he has finally decided to do this. He needs to know. The aurors escort them to the eighth floor, where the convicted Death Eaters rot.

Rodolphus Lestrange stares at Bellatrix’s girl with a mad glow in his eyes from behind the cell bars. Harry is not that sure about bringing her with him now. But after Ginny left, Harry finally acted on what he had always thought was the correct thing to do: Delphi needed to see her dad. 

Children shouldn't just be ripped out of their families.

“You made it.” his voice is harsh, his tone ecstatic. Rodolphus’ eyes are also dark and Harry feels like he is drowning. “You are together.”

Delphi’s hand squeezes his and she says nothing to the man. She stares up at Harry's face and asks to go back home. 

She calls Harry dad and Rodolphus laughs. His words follow Harry all the way out the prison.

“He will love this”

 

_ He was dreaming, but there was no forest.  _

_ His heart was racing, but there was no Delphi to make him stop and ask about his fervor. _

_ He was trembling, but there was no snow to blame that on. _

_ There was just a hand ghosting over his left hip bone reverently and a whisper behind his ear and when he woke up he closed his door so Delphi wouldn't see him changing his come covered sheets for clean ones. _

 

\---

Hermione and Ron think he is acting weird. He has just received another letter from Molly about Ginny, and he throws it away he pretends he does´t see Delphi´s smile. He also pretends he doesn't know how he has seen her going through his mail every day and that Molly´s letter mentioned other letters he had never received.

He doesn´t really care.

 

_ Sometimes Harry forgot how to breathe. It was a simple enough task, but from time to time he just couldn't remember how to do it. Sometimes his lungs would just close, the pressure on his chest too big for him to handle and he forgot how to inhale. _

_ In dreams, ghostly hands would run over his chest and there where skin met skin his lungs would ever so slowly come back to life, as if all they had been doing was waiting for permission to do so. _

 

\---

 

Harry is going over some reports and Delphi is playing with his hair. Hermione and Ron were going to visit around four and he needs this done by then.

“Are you excited to see the baby?” he asks her. 

“Have you stopped looking?” she answers him instead. “We don't dream together that much anymore. You won't even let me sleep with you. Are you mad at me?”

Harry’s cheeks are red. Ginny’s departure has definitely had an impact in his libido and rare is a night when he doesn't wake up panting with no one to blame for his moans. If he ever woke up like  _ that  _ with Delphi pressed against him he would have to kill himself in embarrassment.

So he assures her nothing is wrong and tries to make up some excuse about growing up meaning she had to sleep in her own bed. He agrees to let her sneak into his room on Fridays because he is weak.

Hermione looks reluctant to let Delphi hold Hugo. Ron asks Harry about Teddy and he doesn't miss the way Delphi’s lips press tightly together.

 

_ He moaned into the pillow and got a low laugh against the skin of his back.  _

_ “So demanding…” there were fingertips caressing his stomach and Harry's muscles jumped “Has no one ever taught you to wait?” _

_ There was a tongue moving up the back of his neck and Harry had never feel so exposed, so real in his entire life. He pressed  his body up and back, into the one above him until he felt a chest against his back and thighs over his own and the bulge inside the other’s pants against his ass. _

_ There was no ache in his chest and he trembled so bad he groaned. _

_ He wanted. Now. He was done with waiting. _

_ There was another laugh and an arm surrounded his chest holding him in place, head to toe against the man that had him on his fours. _

_ “Find it, Harry.” _

_ There was something similar to a thrust of clothed hips against his naked back and Harry cried out. _

_ “Find it.” _

_ He woke up with parseltongue on the tip of his tongue. _

 

_ Again. _

 

_ \--- _

 

There aren't much cases to take care of. Everyone has almost forgotten the break in into the Ministry and times are peaceful.

Delphi turns eight and Rodolphus Lestrange dies in Azkaban. Harry takes her to the funeral.

Draco Malfoy is there, unsurprisingly. He is married now. He looks at Delphi like he was staring at a ghost.

She wants to talk, so they let her, not really knowing how to act when the orphan of a Death Eater being raised by the hero of their side asks for a couple of words of her own during the burial.

“Rodolphus was not always kind” she starts, and never calls him dad. “But he taught me important things, and for that I'm grateful.”

She looks at the coffin like she’s battling herself and Harry just wants to hold her near and end the emptiness in both of them.

“Thanks to you I found Harry.” she whispers. There might be something else about a purpose but someone in the crowd starts screaming to get Delphi - _ the little freak-  _ away from the speaker and Harry rushes towards her and disapparates them both when things start flying towards her head.

 

_ He had spent the whole week getting Howlers. Apparently people hadn't appreciated that the daughter of the Death Eaters who had slaughtered their families had had any nice words for him. People were angry, and wanted a public apology. _

_ Harry made sure he burned every single one of them. Then he gathered every inch of bravery he was able to and headed to a muggle gay bar. _

_ Delphi would be okay with Andromeda and Teddy. Harry needed to get rid of the dreams. _

_ Hermione’s letter burned into his pocket, her words about Ginny wanting to meet felt like acid against his leg. _

_ When he arrived home he was not a virgin like that anymore and the voice in his dreams laughed and laughed and he woke up with a parseltongue beg for more.  _

 

\---

 

The waters calm down and Harry is able to take Delphi to Diagon Alley without fearing nasty encounters.  They walk down the alley and he buys her ice cream. They are celebrating his ascension to the Head of the Auror department.

She asks him if he is now less lonely.

“Are you happier now?”

He buys some ice cream for himself and shares some details about his last case in the Auror department. 

Sometimes he can't help but think that while Delphi helps the pain go away it had never been unbearable until he had first met her.

 

_ Ron and Neville thought he needed a guys night out. He tried to enjoy it. _

_ The ache in his chest was now more of a phantom feeling when he had Delphi by his side, but passed midnight he excused himself and rushed back home.  _

_ He had forgotten how awful the feeling of emptiness was, before Delphi. He wondered how he had survived it. _

_ Then again, he thought while caressing her dark locks spread over the pillow, maybe he hadn't. _

 

_ \--- _

 

Harry is sobbing, every breath shaking his frame violently when Delphi opens the door to his room.

“Dad?”

He is lying in bed, he woke up crying. He needs to  _ find _ something and he  _ can't  _ and Delphi wasn't in his dream and he had forgotten how terrifying the loneliness was. 

He couldn’t find it and he couldn’t stop and he is so hollowed inside his bones thrive.

Delphi gets on the bed and smoothes his tears.

“It's okay dad. I feel it too. It's okay.” she breathes on his hair and Harry has never feel more pathetic and loved.

“I'm not lonely, Delphi.” Harry's voice breaks and he looks into his girl's eyes “I am shattered. And I can't fix it.”

He sobs again because everything is so much. The ache is so much. He can't even wipe away his own tears.

Delphi stills and Harry looks at her again. Something on her face speaks of determination.

“... But we can, dad. We just have to home.” It's soft. A whisper.  _ A promise. _ “Do you trust me?”

Harry does. For some reason, he does.

He let's the girl lead him out of their home and disapparate them.

 

_ “You know who she is.” had taunted him Rodolphus. “You know oh so well.” _

_ Harry did know. He just didn’t want to believe it. _

_ He didn’t want to believe what that said about him. _

_ He often wondered if he would have been able to live with the hole in his soul if no one had found Delphi and given a Harry a taste of what being complete again felt like. _

_ Although maybe that wouldn't have been enough? Maybe the horcrux had really extirpated itself from his soul in a way that had let him damaged forever?  _

_ Sometimes it kept him awake at night.  _

  
  


_ \--- _

 

It's the house. The house where they rescued her.

“Here Dad, careful with the head, aunt Millie always said this ceiling was too low.”

She has her little hand on his while she guides him through the long mesentery of dungeons he and his team had scrutinized for months after they imprisoned every Death Eater in the mansion. Her feet do not hesitate.

“Can you feel it Dad? We are close.”

He  _ can _ feel it. Something in his stomach beats like a second heart. 

They are close.

_ Finditfinditfindit- _

_ “ _ Only we can enter,” her eyes are feverish, she palms the walls near to frenetic “Only us, only  _ Him.” _

_ “Only us Dad. You and I and Father.”  _

Parseltongue sends a shiver down his spine and he doesn't want to  _ know _ -  But he can't leave. Not now.  _ No. _ Delphi cuts her hand on the stones of the wall and Harry sees the shine of a blood spell being unlocked before the door opens and dozens of candles come to life.

He sees it, and he reaches for the closest wall because his knees go weak. So that's what Auror Jake lverns had wanted him to find. He couldn’t believe the Ministry had been able to cover  _ this.  _

Lord Voldemort’s corpse stares at him from a black, open coffin. It stands at the end of the circular room and Harry knows it's supposed to be an altar.

Delphi tugs him by the sleeve and Harry can't do anything but follow her into the room. She looks so tiny next to the standing figure of the Dark Lord, her hair wild like her eyes and Harry can definitely see Bellatrix in her. 

“Hi, father.” she speaks with devotion and presses her face to what Harry guesses is a protective spell around the body. Her breath leaves a little cloud on the spell’s surface as she speaks. “I'm back. We are back. I promised you, remember? I waited until he was ready and now I´m back.”

Harry is trembling and he has never feel so aware of himself since the Battle of Hogwarts. His blood hums beneath his skin and he can't move.

“Uncle Rodolphus brought father two years ago, dad. We tried to bring him back, but that didn't happen. Blood magic is complicated, and not even having father's body here helped.” her eyes find Harry’s and she smiling “But you happened, dad.

Uncle said it had to be the blood connection. That father's spirit had tried to come back but couldn't, and an accident activated the blood connection. That's why we met in dreams, dad. He has your blood. And because he has it, I have it too. I have waited for you for so long… ”

Harry stares at  _ Voldemort's face _ and he feels his knees hit the floor. Delphi’s hands feel so small when she cups his face, like a doll's, and He is everywhere Harry forced himself to not look at.

He is in the dark brown of Delphi’s eyes, He is in the delicate arc of her neck, in the edges of her face.  Yes, the hair is all Bellatrix’s, but Delphi is so  _ Voldemort’s  _ Harry forgets how to breathe when she presses her forehead to his.

“I feel it, too.” her voice is a whisper so low Harry could have missed it “The ache.”

His arms feel useless at his sides, he doesn't know what to do and Delphi’s eyes could have put a binding spell on him. Yet Harry wants to believe. He wants it with every inch of his body.

“That's what I was born for. I'm here to help, dad. I'm the ace up his sleeve.”

Rodolphus’ laugh is on his ears, and then it’s not Rodolphus’ laugh and it's not  _ that _ kind of laugh, either.

“But we found it, we can stop the pain now.” She sounds so hopeful. She is begging him with those eyes. “Don't you want to stop it?”

He wants. He needs it to stop. He needs to stop feeling wrecked and only be able to properly breathe at night, when long fingers trace his ribs.

“ _ Dad, please.”  _

He shouldn't be able to understand parseltongue anymore. What had Rodolphus Lestrange done in that ritual?

Delphi’s lovely curls caress his face and she looks like she is going to cry. She looks so tiny compared to the imposing white figure in the coffin. Harry himself probably looks incredibly small kneeling in front of it.

But there's something pulsating whiting his bones and he knows Delphi feels it too.

“ _ He is waiting for us.” _

_ “Is he?”  _ the parseltongue rolls of his tongue like it was never gone.

“ _ In the in between. In the station. He is waiting for his family to bring him back.” _

Harry knows what is required from him. Maybe being the Master of the Hallows -even for a single moment- had given him a way of knowing how to do this. How to cheat. How to escape death. He raises his arm, trapped in between the two of them like a secret. Like a present.

Like an offering.

“ _ Blood.” _

 

Delphi smiles.


End file.
